Pedro Grifol said he didn’t anticipate the Chicago White Sox’s struggles.
“But you don’t control the cards you’re dealt,” the first-year manager said before Wednesday’s game against the Toronto Blue Jays. “You control how you respond to it. And that’s the only thing we can control.
“Adversity is educational. And how you deal with adversity is also very important. We’re not going to panic through this thing. I’ll reflect and work and make adjustments and be hard on myself, but I’m definitely not going to panic.”
Those adjustments will have to be made at home after the Sox completed a winless six-game trip with an 8-0 loss in front of 35,069 at Rogers Centre.
The trying times continued for the Sox, who suffered their seventh consecutive defeat and are 11 games under .500 at 7-18. It’s their worst 25-game start since 1986, when they also began 7-18.
“We’re in a funk and we have to come together as a team and figure out how to get out of it because this isn’t fun,” catcher Seby Zavala said.
The Sox followed three losses to the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field with three more against the Blue Jays, who did a portion of their damage Wednesday with two outs.
Sox starter Michael Kopech retired the first two batters of the third inning. Santiago Espinal singled and Kopech hit George Springer with a pitch. Bo Bichette followed with an RBI single, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. drove in two with a double.
“(They) put together some decent ABs, hit a couple good pitches, hit a couple mistake pitches and had one big inning there that can hurt you,” Kopech said. “I didn’t feel like I threw the ball terrible, but the bottom line is I have to throw better.”
Espinal had a two-out RBI single in the fourth to extend the Blue Jays lead to 4-0.
Kopech allowed four runs on six hits with four strikeouts and two walks in five innings.
“Right now we haven’t done both (pitching and hitting) together very well,” Kopech said. “Still confident things will come together. It’s been a tough stretch for us and we all feel it.
“Bottom line is pitching side has to be better and as a whole we have to be better. I’ll take this one by myself. I have to be more efficient. Eliminate big innings, and I didn’t do that.”
The Sox were outscored 20-2 in the series. Their only runs came on an Andrew Vaughn double in the third inning of Monday’s 5-2 loss. They’ll take a 24-inning scoreless drought into Thursday’s series opener against the Rays at Guaranteed Rate Field.
The collective offensive slump continued Wednesday with 17 strikeouts. Toronto pitchers struck out 10 of the final 11 batters.
“We’ve got to clean it up, we’ve got to be tougher outs,” Grifol said after the game. “I see frustration when we get behind, and we’ve got to clean that up. Just because we get behind in a game doesn’t mean we can’t win a game.
“We’ve come back before. We were just down 4-0 to Tampa (on Friday) and came back and took a 7-4 lead (in an eventual 8-7 loss). We’ve just got to clean some things up.”
For the second consecutive game, the Sox were limited to four hits — all singles. They had 11 hits in the series, four by Andrew Benintendi.
“We give up big innings and it’s hard for our offense,” Zavala said. “It puts a lot of pressure on our offense and in turn puts pressure on our pitchers because we can’t score runs or we’re not scoring runs.
“If you can’t score runs, you can never win a game. And that puts pressure on the pitchers. When you’re putting unnecessary pressure on both sides, it’s tough.”
The Sox were shut out in back-to-back games for the first time since April 21-22, 2017, against Cleveland. They’ve lost nine of 10 and 12 of 14.
A seven-game homestand begins with a four-game series against the Rays, who have baseball’s best record at 20-5.
Asked if the Sox are leaning into the upcoming challenge, Zavala said, “We have to.”
“There’s no other way to say it,” he said. “We have to find a way to start winning and we can’t curl up in a ball. If you curl up in a ball, then you leave our locker room. I don’t think we have any of those guys. But if anybody does feel that way, then it’s definitely going to bring us down.”
()
